


Narcissus

by gothicgrrl1976



Series: God and Marvels [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:48:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27826294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gothicgrrl1976/pseuds/gothicgrrl1976
Summary: After a hospital visit, can Happy's and Peter's new relationship get back on track?
Relationships: Happy Hogan/Peter Parker
Series: God and Marvels [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2036398
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10





	Narcissus

“Will you just sit, Happy? You’re worrying me.” Peter’s voice was from behind me, as I dropped the duffel bag I was carrying on the floor of my living room.

I turned to him. “Parker, for fuck’s sake, that bag held like 3 t-shirts and pair of pajama bottoms.”

He glared at me. “And you’re having trouble catching your breath. I can hear you. You literally got out of the Stark Tower medical center ONE hour ago. You don’t need to be carrying anything.”

May swept past the both of us, smelling softly of her lotion overlaid with the stink of the hospital, just as I rolled my eyes at Parker and replied. “Parker, you’re hearing no such thing.”

May caught my eye and mouthed, “You’re in it for it now.” She was in the kitchen, rattling around in my cupboards. But since, like 95% of the time I spent with May was at either her apartment or on neutral ground, like a restaurant - not in my apartment - she had no idea where anything went.

“May, what are you looking for?” I asked, just as Parker laid into me.

She opened her mouth to answer, just as he began. His eyes were flashing and he had a flush to his cheeks. I think this was the angriest I’d ever seen him, and Fury, once I was feeling better, had had the AI bring up the recordings of Parker … reacting to Lauren’s poisoning of me. We had spent a solid Tuesday afternoon sitting in twin recliners in my hospital room, critiquing Lauren’s fighting form (she had no form, none at all. She didn’t make a fist in the video, but if she had, I’m like 115% sure that her thumb would have been on the inside) and cheering on Parker. When I had watched him box, he had a very educated form, taught to him by Vince and me. He was not an innovative boxer, but he was good at imitation and following what we had shown him. I saw Vince in his footwork and myself in his stance when he boxed.

When he was Spider-man, he had an entirely different, more elegant fighting form, utilizing his webs, both man-made and his own, to do a more aerial, more fleet kind of fighting. He fought almost fourth-dimensionally, from what I had seen, often swinging up buildings or other tall, stationary objects to attack his opponent from above, or from the back, or in a swinging attack flying on a web that no one could catch.

In the video, Parker fought fair with Lauren, I’ll give him that. He hadn’t used any of his extra abilities. He stayed to Lauren’s front - Marquess of Queensbury rules here - stayed with both feet on the ground, didn’t use any of his webs, either from the shooters or his own wrists, and I don’t think he ever lost control of himself enough that he would have truly hurt her, but God Almighty. I would have been scared to fight him, with him looking like that. Parker looked like he was a trapped animal defending young. Or his mate, I guess. His movements were more efficient than I had ever seen them, designed to hurt quickly, to drop his opponent with a minimum of fuss or angst on his part. 

Superheroes, if you watched them, and unfortunately, working with Boss, I had seen a ton of fight footage over the years as they analyzed their own fights or forced me (looking at you, Tony, looking at you) to rehash the fights with them. Most of their fights were flashy fights, with more than their fair share of property damage and collateral issues, with the fighters almost so in-love with their own tech or mutant abilities, their virtuosity, that they should have been fighting in a mirror sometimes. I think Tony probably would have gotten off as much on that as he might have watching himself fuck in a mirror honestly. God, he loved that suit.

Anyway, Parker used none of his super-abilities to smash Lauren to the ground, as far as I could tell. He just moved fast and fair. He hit her in the face, blacked her eye. Called her words that I didn’t think he knew. Hit her again, broke her nose. Used his words in a way that probably cut her more deeply than a 15-minute Shakespearean monologue of cuss words could have. Not a single bad word in the four sentences he said, but I think her soul had to be shredded after that. Pulled his arm back again, before you saw Fury nod the tiniest little bit at Bruce (actually being Bruce, not the Hulk for once) to pull him back.

You’d think watching that, that he’d have fought Bruce to get at her again, but I think he’d done what he’d tried to accomplish. He didn’t fight Bruce to get back to Lauren at all. Parker just turned his head, talked to Bruce, reassuring him, I think. Bruce talked back - the video didn’t capture anything of what either one had said to each other - and nodded. Bruce let him go and clapped his shoulder, manfully. Parker had nodded at him, smiled at him a bit, walked to Lauren, then stared her in the face, while she was crying and carrying on for a good 2 minutes, before he twisted up his mouth and then spit at her. He had walked out of the interrogation room at that point, door swinging and slamming in his wake.

I didn’t know he had it in him, and it took Fury doing an immediate replay like 5 times in a row, cackling the whole time, for me to grasp that that was actually Parker. An incredibly hot version of Parker. Mini-Happy was entirely out of commission, but I would have been standing at attention normally, even with Fury shouting, “Atta-boy!” for the 10th time as video-Parker broke Lauren’s nose again, over and over.

I was not feeling as turned on at this moment, where Parker looked like he’d gladly yell at me, then throttle me and step over my prone corpse to get a glass of water, in order to clear his throat before he started yelling at me all over again.

“Happy!!! Goddamnit! I can hear your heartbeat if you’re anywhere in a building with me. You could be in the med wing of the Tower, on the 50th floor, and I can be on the first floor, at the reception desk, trying to find my FUCKING badge, so that I can get the hell up to see you, and I. WILL. HEAR. YOUR. HEARTBEAT. Do you understand me?”

He got in my face, his eyes glassy. “So don’t you fucking tell me that I can’t hear your fucking breath get short, carrying that bag. Ok, Happy?” 

“They made you show a badge, Parker?”

He did a weird groan-moan and tossed the bag he was carrying towards the sliding doors to the balcony, before he stalked off to the master bedroom. I could hear the water running in the en-suite. I turned to May, who was still digging in the cabinets.

“Don’t mind him, Happy. He’s still exhausted as all get out, and he’s worried about you. He does have super-senses, you know. I didn’t know he was focusing on your heartbeat quite so much, but yeah, you get indigestion right now, he’s going to be in your face offering you Tums before you even know it hurts.” May did a half-smile and shrugged at me.

“They made him show a badge to get up to the medical wing?” I was opting to focus on that right now, rather than Parker’s anger. Yeah, I cared. I didn’t want Parker to be angry or suffer a minute on account of me, but I was also so bone-deep tired that my feelings weren’t super-accessible right now. The drugs made me floaty and vague, in a horrible muzzy way, and I knew I was being a shitty partner, but I didn’t have the mental resources to know what to do about it, at this exact moment.

“New guy, I think. Didn’t recognize Peter without his suit. Peter called Pepper, that’s all, and she came down and got him let up. Last time I paid any attention going through the reception area, I saw his civilian photo posted up like 10 different places - on the phones, on the back wall, taped to the desk calendar - so that everyone knew to let His Royal Peter-ness in,” she winked at me. “I think he just had a flash of panic that it was going to be harder to get upstairs than it actually was.”

She turned towards me. “What do you feel like eating?”

I shrugged. “I’m not hungry.”

“That’s the pain meds. You still need to eat though, especially if you don’t want Tums shoved down your throat in a Peter-panic. They’ll hurt your stomach.”

I looked at her mutely, until she took pity on me. “Look. I don’t hear things being tossed in your bathroom anymore. He’s probably calmed down. Go take a nap for an hour. I’ll figure out something.”

“What do you think he’s thrown around?” I didn’t really have the energy to care, much, but I was curious. 

“Mostly, it’s a lot of staring in the mirror and splashing his face. His Uncle used to do that too, but Ben usually talked out loud.” She pulled out a can of soup and stared at it for a minute. “What on earth did you buy cream of asparagus for? Ben made it super-easy to figure what I needed to apologize for, I’ll give him that.” She made shoo-ing motions with her hands. “Go. You’re tired. He’s tired. Laying down together will make both of you feel better.”

It seemed like a superhuman amount of work to turn to the bedroom, just to have to deal with an angry Parker when I got there, but I put in the work and trudged to the half-open door of the bedroom. Parker was sitting on the edge of his side of the bed, legs wide open, hunched over. The very picture of despair.

I tapped lightly on the door, “Peter, you ok?” I walked into the room.

His muffled voice answered me. “You can’t sweet-talk me by using my actual name, Happy.”

“Harry. Believe it or not, my actual name is Harry, Parker.” He glanced up at me in surprise, before ducking his head back down. “And you can call me Snookum-sugar-booger, and I’ll answer to it faster than I would ‘Harry.’” I sat next to him, with the same wide-legged stance, nudging his knee with mine. I tilted my face way down to catch his eyes. “I know, I know, Vince got the better name, but they had to give him the best name to even out the field since I was their favorite.” 

That got a slightly sniffly chuckle out of him. I rubbed his back in circles.

“Parker, I know this has been a really shitty three weeks for you. I’m sorry I haven’t really been there.”

That shot his head up fast. “Happy! You were in a coma for a fricking week! And then you slept. Which is what you should be doing! Your body needs to heal! I’m fine.”

I pulled him over and kissed his forehead. “You seem tired, Snookum-sugar-booger. The PT has me doing worse things than holding a duffle bag, you know. I’m not about to run your ten miles. but I do have to have to move.”

He turned his face toward my body and nuzzled my shoulder. “I know. I just worry.”

“It’s ok, Parker. I worry too. Fucking salad forks, Jesus Christ.”

He laughed. “So no fancy restaurants, then?”

“Not even mid-tier ones. Olive Garden is off the table to us. No more Applebee’s!”

I felt him smile against my body. “I’m so sorry that she hurt you. I tried to figure out a way to protect you, but no one ever let me see how you’d be hurt. Just that you’d be hurt. I was so worried all the time - I tried to protect you all the time - “

Parker started to sound like he was getting frantic. I rubbed his back again and kissed his hair. “If you saw that I got hurt, you also saw that our older versions of ourselves were playing chess with each other, remember? And that we’d have a future together AFTER the getting hurt. You saw me recover too. I’ll be fine.”

“I know, Happy. I just can’t believe Lauren -”

“Could be worse. You could be Ned. How’s he doing? I haven’t really asked.”

“I think he’s just playing video games in his underwear and eating pizza right now.”

“Well, give me a few days more to nap, tell him to put on some pants, and he can come play video games here.”

He pulled back from me a little and smiled. “Thanks. I think that would mean a lot to him.”

I nodded and yawned. Parker immediately fussed at me. “You should sleep. I can go make dinner.”

“Your Aunt May is making it.”

He looked at the door doubtfully. “God only knows what she’ll piece together, but I’m tired and she said we should both lay down for an hour or so. I’m game. Besides Pepper is setting up a meal delivery system starting tomorrow, so anything tonight is just a bonus.”

“She doesn’t have to do that.”

I toed off my shoes and laid down over the covers. “Parker, I have learned over the years, and it was hard, but still. If people are worried about you and want to show you that they are worried by sending you gift food from gourmet food-services, you should just smile nicely and eat it.”

He went to pull his shirt off. “You get gourmet worry-food often, Happy?”

As much as it pained me to say it, I said it. “Honey, your Aunt is going to be coming here to wake us up in an hour. I’m not taking my clothes off.”

He pulled his shirt down and mock-pouted at me. “But I miss you.”

“I miss you too, and I’ll gladly spend the next several days sleeping next to you naked, but not with your Aunt here.”

He laid down on his side. “Are you getting under the covers?”

“Nope, not with your Aunt here.” I turned my head and smiled at him, and crossed one of my ankles over the other one.

He snickered at me. “I’m pretty sure she knows…”

“Knows what? We dated for like a week before Lauren took away my dreams of eating off of the smaller of the two forks. I’m pretty sure you and I just held hands, Parker. Sung hymnals together, you know.” I laced our fingers together.

He laughed out loud and squeezed my hand. “Yeah, I remember that clearly. You humming a hymn as you sucked my cock.”

I sucked in a deep breath, overcome with _want_ and _need_ and _mine_. I wanted so much to bury myself in him - not even sexually - but just to merge with him, breathe with him. Keep him safe and let him keep me safe. But where the spirit may be willing… And he was 21, and I wasn’t quite sure he understood.

I coughed a little. “You know it might be a little while before that comes back on line for me, right?”

Parker leaned up on one elbow and looked at me, softly. “So I should put away the weekend plans of reinforcing that light fixture up there.” He meant the one over the bed. “Huh.” 

He leaned towards me and kissed my forehead. “I figured, Happy. I’m ready to sleep for a week too.”

Parker pulled his body closer to me and nestled in. He lay there for a moment and then spoke. “Do you want a blanket, Happy? I can get up and get one.”

“Nope. Unh-uh. Not with your Aunt here.” I turned to him to catch his eye, to make him smile. “I’m seriously thinking about asking you to move over, enough room for the Holy Ghost between us.”

He gently kicked at my foot. “You can take the boy out of Catholic school… Go to sleep, Happy. I’ll be here.”

And so I did.

**Author's Note:**

> So I took a little break, as you might have noticed, but I missed Happy and Peter to let them go. . . I'm thinking this will be a shorter story in between two larger works.
> 
> Feedback always welcome! You can also read my work in the ST:TNG fandom, but I get it if you just love Happy/Peter too much to let that go :-)


End file.
